by Susan Napier
She wouldn’t sleep a wink, of course, but she was bound and determined to pretend to be unconscious for the rest of this wretched journey!
A faint buzzing in her ears roused her. She shifted herself restlessly, nuzzling her cheek and mouth contentedly against the soft, warm fabric which pillowed her.
Soft? Warm?
Elizabeth's eyes flickered open. A few inches away another pair of eyes watched her struggle out of her fitful doze. The pillow that she was using was a masculine shoulder. The warmth moulded to her side from head to hip was pliant muscle. The buzzing was the faint electronic beep of the watch on his wrist, which was anchored to his broad chest by Elizabeth's lax hand. The arm-rest which should have bolstered the division between their almost fully reclined seats had been folded out of the way, to all intents and purposes creating a double bed!
Elizabeth had wanted to keep J.J. Hawkwood under surveillance, but not this close!
She pushed herself upright, brushing her ruffled hair back from her hot face with a trembling hand, and looked down at the man lying beside her.
'I'm sorry, you should have pushed me away,' she said huskily, astounded to find that she had relaxed enough to fall asleep. She could have sworn that she had only closed her eyes a few seconds ago but, glancing at her watch, she saw that nearly an hour had passed since she had laid her head down. The tension and worry of the past few weeks had caught up with her at the most inappropriate of times.
'I didn’t want to wake you up. You looked as if you needed the rest. The nap did you good—you've gained some healthy colour.' He reached up and touched her flushed cheek with a smoothing caress, as if he had every right to, as if he actually cared about the state of a stranger's health. Elizabeth froze and his hand fell back down on to his chest.
'I—I have naturally pale skin,' she muttered.
'You have very unusual colouring. I thought your hair was black at first but it's not, it's a very rich, dark mahogany.' He folded his arms behind his head, his body language suggesting frankness, a complete lack of self-consciousness, a direct contrast to Elizabeth's humming awareness that only a few moments ago she had been cuddled against his side.
She blinked at him slowly, her thoughts still in disarray.
He smiled, not his former taunting smile but one of rare warmth. 'Are you always this sluggish when you wake? Your eyes are as big and sleepy as an infant's. I'm sorry my alarm woke you, but we're due to land in a few minutes anyway. Once we get home you can get some proper rest in a bed...'
We? Home? Bed? A small shock quaked through Elizabeth's system at the disturbing juxtaposition of words.
Her eyes? Suddenly she realised the import of his other comment. She put a hand to her face and discovered that her sunglasses must have fallen off while she slept.
Or had been deliberately removed. She stopped searching and eyed J.J. Hawkwood suspiciously as he returned his seat to its upright position and produced her sunglasses from his left breast-pocket.
'You were so restless that I was worried you might damage the frames,' he said, handing them over.
Elizabeth debated whether to put them back on and decided that she might as well, although it was a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted. However, she still needed a defensive shield between herself and her quarry.
'Thank you.' She fiddled with the arm-rest, trying to fold it back where it belonged—a safety barrier between them.
'Again—my pleasure, mademoiselle.' With a simple movement he accomplished the deed for her, then watched her grimly struggle to return her seat to its upright position, all thumbs under his regard. He was well named, she decided. He was as watchful as a hawk.
'You don’t seem to be having much luck today, do you?' he commented when she finally succeeded in her task. She frowned at him, her brow crinkling beneath her ruffled fringe, and he added suavely, 'We're coming down through the clouds now; would you like to swap seats so you can watch the landing?'
'I'd rather not,' she said uneasily, noting the tilt of the wing and the ragged sweep of wispy cloud which suddenly cleared to reveal a mountainous terrain rotating sickeningly below.
'There's no need to be afraid—'
'I'm not afraid!' Unconsciously her hand had clenched on the arm-rest.
'Is this your first flight?'
'Yes.' She felt hopelessly naive admitting it.
'First time out of New Zealand?'
Now she felt even more naïve. 'Yes. But I'm not afraid,' she reaffirmed, more to herself than to him.
'Just nervous, hmm? I know the feeling. Even seasoned travellers like me are a touch tense during take-offs and landings...'
Elizabeth hardly heard his soothing murmur; her anxious gaze was riveted out of the window. They seemed to be coming awfully low and she could see nothing but mountains and valleys. Not a sign of any flat or inhabited land. The plane wheeled even further and now she could see the sea where it met a reddish-brown strip of marshy shore. It seemed to go on forever. She had known that New Caledonia was the third largest island in the South Pacific after New Guinea and New Zealand, but still she had somehow imagined a flat coral atoll surrounded by sea. Instead she was seeing a bush-covered volcanic terrain that looked like the edge of a huge continent. The occasional dwelling dotted the landscape but still she could see no sign of an airport and they were coming even lower, the engines roaring and vibrating, setting her teeth on edge. Surely they had been circling far too long?
'I hope the pilot's not lost,' she muttered, swallowing nervously and feeling her ears pop. 'I thought the airport was at Nouméa but I don’t see any city...'
'Tontouta is only a very small airport but it's well signposted.' The faint mockery in his tone was more reassuring than his gravity would have been. A warm, abrasive palm closed over her clenched hand, holding it with a firm, confident pressure, absorbing some of her tension. 'It's also about forty-five minutes' drive from Nouméa itself so you won’t be seeing the city for a while yet. The travel agents who handle our bookings are supposed to provide a travel package with all that kind of information. Didn’t you get one?'
Elizabeth bristled at the hint of criticism. If he knew what she had been going through he would realise why she had been unable to anticipate her holiday with any real enthusiasm! 'Yes, but I haven’t read it in detail,' she said coolly, her galloping heartbeat slowing a little as she saw a wind-sock waving in the wind below and a segment of wide black tarmac.
She closed her eyes at the moment of impact, the large masculine hand tightening over hers, the blunt fingers sliding between her own, distracting her from the fluttery anxiety in her stomach. For a man who lived the good life, J.J. Hawkwood had surprisingly work-roughened skin.
'I'm glad that's over!' she breathed when the plane finally taxied to a halt. For a moment she forgot that she was supposed to be tough and independent. 'I hate doings things for the first time,' she said shakily.
'That must cast a rather restricting influence over your life,' he commented drily, and she pulled her hand out from under his, her skin tingling at the sandpaper friction of his roughened palm. 'I'm surprised, in that case, that you should choose to travel overseas for the first time alone...'
'I didn’t exactly choose...at the last minute my friend couldn’t come,' she informed him, reluctantly answering the unspoken question.
'What a shame. Is she ill?' The silver-grey eyes were brimming with a heartily offensive innocence.
Her mouth compressed into a starched bow. 'What makes you think it was a girlfriend?' she demanded tartly.
The silver gleam intensified and she instantly regretted providing him with the opportunity for more of his exquisite mockery. 'Because you hate first times?' The questioning inflexion was purely for effect.
The prim pink bow lost all its starch as Elizabeth's mouth melted open. How dared he?
'What makes you think I've never been away with a man?' she snapped, choosing the least embarrassing of h
is slew of implications to fight back on.
'Have you?'
She was too angry to care about the truth. 'Dozens!'
'Singly or in groups?' he enquired with interest. 'Both!'
'Well, all I can say is that you wear incredibly well. That peach-soft skin and those big innocent eyes don’t show a trace of your dreadfully dissipated lifestyle. In fact, if I had been asked to guess, I would have said that you were a quiet, shy, respectable lady—a librarian or school-teacher perhaps—who lives with her cat and her books and enjoys quiet evenings at home with friends...'
In other words a boring, sexless spinster. In spite of all her efforts to bring him round to just that point of view Elizabeth was chagrined by the accuracy of his description. Instead of feeling pleased that her disguise had worked she found herself wondering if it had been a disguise at all. Minus the cat and the shyness his guess was infuriatingly close to reality. Only, Elizabeth told herself, she wasn’t inhabiting reality right now. She was in a weird topsy-turvy world where the truth was that the boring spinster was a woman of mystery, of secrets beyond his imagining. Yes, the last laugh was definitely Elizabeth's, even though she would never have the satisfaction of laughing out loud.
Acutely conscious that if she fell into the trap of arguing with him she would only compromise herself even more, Elizabeth put her nose in the air and bustled off the plane with the rest of the first-class passengers, ignoring the softly mocking laughter that chased her angry ears.
The open-air staircase which had been rolled over to the door of the plane gave Elizabeth her first experience of foreign climes. It was midday and the sky which she had half expected to be the same azure-blue that had appeared on all the travel brochures was almost as grey and overcast as the Auckland skies she had left behind. But instead of being chilly and damp the air was deliciously warm, the breeze that ruffled her hair was balmy and pleasant, fragrant with a cluster of scents that she couldn’t identify.
It was only after she had gone through the immigration check and was dragging her suitcase off the luggage carousel in the small arrivals hall that she suddenly remembered her blouse. In her hurry to get off the plane she had forgotten to seek out the air hostess who had promised to return it to her.
As she turned anxiously to look for a member of the airline staff she caught sight of J.J. Hawkwood. He was speaking to one of the customs officials over by the doors to the street, zipping up the soft brown leather bag which he had opened on the counter between them and hefting it in his left hand. Elizabeth knew that she didn’t have any time to waste. Her nerves were already in a sufficiently bad state. If she wasted time trying to find her blouse now she might be forced to walk through the 'No Declarations' channel of the customs check alone instead of surrounded by a comfortable number of the hundred or so other passengers. If a customs officer so much as murmured a polite welcome to his country Elizabeth was afraid she might crack.
The air hostess knew her destination, knew who J.J. Hawkwood was—Elizabeth would wait until she was safely on the Ile des Faucons to try to retrieve her property and return his. The resort was providing coach transport to Nouméa and then a boat out to the island, so in spite of her intention to avoid direct confrontations with her quarry from now on Elizabeth decided that she would casually mention it to him in passing, so that he didn’t think she was trying to steal his shirt.
She might be an accessory after the fact to theft but she was not a thief!
Unfortunately, safely out on the pavement, Elizabeth saw the powerful dark-haired figure of J.J. Hawkwood striding not towards the cluster of courtesy coaches provided by the various hotels and resorts, but in the opposite direction, towards a car park. For a moment Elizabeth was disconcerted, then she realised that it was unrealistic to expect that a corporate head would travel by coach, no matter how well appointed. Of course he would be met, possibly by a chauffeured limousine.
But what if it was Serena Corvell he was being met by? What if he and his mistress were going to spend their holiday together somewhere other than the Isle of Hawks? What if the booking at the resort was just a blind and they were going to disappear to some secret love-nest?
Elizabeth dithered for precious seconds before she decided she had no choice but to grab a taxi and follow him. Even if she found out nothing more than the bare fact of their destination at least she could go home and truthfully say that she had done her best.
No one had to know that she was fervently hoping that her best would not be good enough!
CHAPTER FOUR
'MISSED the boat, Miss Lamb?'
Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly. She would recognise that whisky-and-honey voice anywhere, the dark resonances of tone overlaid with a mocking precision that she had encountered for the first time only a few hours ago.
She pivoted slowly on the wooden pier, away from the dark-haired young man on the boat tied alongside.
J.J. Hawkwood, for all the mockery in his voice, wasn’t smiling. Although he was still wearing his jeans, his blue shirt was now replaced by a white ‘I-shirt which emphasised the tanned face and heavily muscled arms.
Sweat trickled down between her shoulder-blades under her shirt—his shirt. In the time that she had lurked around the marina waiting for the reappearance of her quarry the thickly overcast skies had cleared to the crisp blue of the tourist brochures and the temperature had steadily risen.
'Yes,' she admitted reluctantly, resenting the necessity of making herself sound like a fool in front of him. 'I was just finding out if there was some other way of getting over to the island.'
Her English was as clipped as his. The fact that he was wearing white boat shoes rather than the polished brown leather he had been wearing earlier explained why she hadn’t heard him approaching. She hoped he hadn’t been behind her long enough to hear her bargaining with the boat-owner in his own language.
His head tilted towards her suitcase at her feet, and the dark brows shifted into a frown.
'Your luggage, too? Didn’t the staff on the bus check you all on board the boat?'
The censure in his voice warned her that someone's job might be in jeopardy if she didn’t at least come partially clean.
'I... I wasn’t on the bus. I took a taxi.'
This time his eyebrows rose and he shifted so that she got a good look at the narrowed grey eyes.
'Did you not realise that your reservation included airport transfers?'
'Yes, of course. But I wanted to see a bit of Nouméa before I... I left for the island...'
In truth, in the hour's trip from the airport she had hardly noticed the scenery, except to note that none of it seemed wildly exotic. The only features that impinged on her nervous anxiety were the deep redness of the earth where it was scraped bare by agriculture and erosion, and the towering flax-like palms with neatly interwoven leaves that reminded her of French plaiting.
Most of her attention had been focused on the fast-moving red Pantera that they were following and which the taxi driver, not surprisingly in view of the importance of the man and the distinctiveness of his car, had immediately identified. Rather than being suspicious of her reasons for following the famous—or notorious—J.J. Hawkwood, the driver had been amused and faintly pitying.
It had soon become irritatingly obvious that he had pegged Elizabeth as the victim of a jealous passion and he had even gone so far as to suggest a short-cut to her quarry's most likely destination—Monsieur Hawkwood's pied-a-terre at Port Plaisance. Elizabeth had refused, and when, sure enough, they had skirted the Baie de L'Orphelinat to pull up outside a small but exclusive-looking shopping centre next to a marina she had paid the driver off with less than good grace, after extracting the information that the regular launch service to Ile des Faucons left from the other side of the marina.
The Pantera had disappeared between some tall salmon-coloured buildings perched on the very edge of the dock and the taxi driver, with a sly smirk, had pointed out the to
p balcony of one of the buildings as the 'Hawk's Nest'.
Elizabeth had been sipping coffee in the shopping centre's open-air roof-top bar when the airport bus, which had obviously obeyed the speed limits that the Pantera and taxi had flagrantly ignored, pulled into the marina. She anxiously watched several of her fellow air-travellers escorted to a launch carrying the hotel logo, ready to spring into action if J.J. Hawkwood made an appearance, but there had been no sign of him and Elizabeth had forced herself to stay put, even though watching the launch leave had left her with a panicky feeling of being abandoned.
She filled in some of her idle time looking at the file that Uncle Simon had given her, thinking that the photograph of Hawkwood was a very poor one. His face was turned slightly off-centre, angled lighting throwing up shadows and lines on his face that hadn’t been apparent in the even lighting on board the plane. His face also looked fleshier, less aesthetic, and his right ear sported a discreet gold stud rather than the flashy ring. The shot of his alleged paramour, on the other hand, was excellent. Serena Corvell was a cool, beautiful blonde, and from the haughtily complacent expression on her face she knew it!
Elizabeth had assumed that the hotel launch would be back and forth all day, but when she had finally got fed up with watching the empty balcony on the top floor and made her way down to the harbour-master's office she discovered to her dismay that the trip to the Isle of Hawks took much longer than she had assumed and the launch wouldn’t be back again until after the New Caledonian 'siesta' that closed all the shops from eleven a.m. until three in the afternoon. The idea of having to wait one more minute, let alone an hour was more than Elizabeth could bear. There must be a boat-owner somewhere in the marina who would take her over to the island for the right price.
The answer, according to the three she had tried so far, was that the right price was beyond her pocket. Elizabeth was too prudent a businesswoman to look upon Uncle Simon's offer to pay her expenses as a licence for extravagance, and who knew how many wild-goose chases like today's she might have to embark on to keep tabs on the elusive Hawk?